Liberal commentators have struggled to explain away the results of Egypt’s parliamentary elections as something other than a massive victory for Islamist forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood and conservative Salafists, rather than admitting that the Arab Spring has not produced the liberal secular revolution everyone had expected based on reading Twitter.

In his column for the New York Times yesterday, Nick Kristof offered his explanation of why the West shouldn’t be too worried about Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. To do so, he interviewed a Muslim Brotherhood spokewoman:

If you want to understand the Islamic forces that are gaining strength in Egypt and scaring people here and abroad, let me tell you about my dinner in the home of Muslim Brotherhood activists.
First, meet my hostess: Sondos Asem, a 24-year-old woman who is pretty much the opposite of the stereotypical bearded Brotherhood activist.
She speaks perfect English, is writing a master’s thesis on social media, and helps run the Brotherhood’s English-language Twitter feed, @Ikhwanweb.

She explained:

“I don’t think Egypt can ever be compared to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Afghanistan,” she replied. “We, as Egyptians, are religiously very moderate.”
Sondos looked exasperated. “We embrace moderate Islam,” she said. “We are not the ultra-conservatives that people in the West envision.”

Kristof’s hopes and Asem’s arguments aren’t necessarily wrong, but there’s no reason to trust the Brotherhood’s claims to moderation so readily. Egypt’s future is uncertain, yet the liberal media’s optimism and affection for the secular revolutionaries seriously slants their coverage and commentary.

To balance out the bias, Kristof offers the wan support of a few secularists whom he interviewed, who claimed that they weren’t worried about the MB either. But of course, they are subject to their own biases as well — as advocates of the revolution, they aren’t yet ready to admit that their struggle seems to have been hijacked by Islamists as well.

One of the secularists who tells Kristof he isn’t worried is Amr Moussa, former foreign minister and Egyptian presidential candidate. Kristof duly reports that “Egypt will continue to seek good relations with the United States and will unquestionably stand by its peace treaty with Israel.” Moussa may in fact think and hope this, but Egyptian leaders aren’t telling the rest of the world the same thing they’re telling liberal journalists. Just over the past two days, the leading party in Parliament, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, reported that Egypt will both “review its relations with all countries and improve its ties to Iran” and reconsider their peace treaty with Israel.